Sweet Addiction

Robin Edelman, MS, RD, CDE

Can our instinctive love of sugar turn to chemical dependence?

Long ago, Peg Duvall fell into a trap. As a teenager in the 1950s, Duvall studied diligently and led a life surrounded by high school friends. But she had a hard time relaxing at night. Around 10 o’clock, she and her brother would meet in the kitchen for a snack. Between the two of them they would go through half a loaf of bread, piling each piece with sugar and cinnamon and toasting it in the oven. Often they would chase down the toast with sweetened cereal and ice cream.

After an hour of banter and laughter, Duvall would begin to feel tired, descending from the euphoria of the sugar rush. She could finally relax enough to fall asleep.

Four years later, as a freshman at Cornell University, demands were intense and although Duvall continued to achieve high grades, the stress of academics and social life took its toll. Studying at her dorm-room desk she would feel “wiped out” and head down to one of the snack wagons that parked outside the university residences each evening. Night after night, a candy bar or pastry helped to pick her up and give her a sense of control—at least for a while.

The pattern never stopped, even in adult life. As a successful software engineering technician, Duvall couldn’t get through the energy slumps that hit her in repeated waves throughout the afternoon without trudging down the hall to the office candy machine for a PayDay or a packet of Chuckles. On the commute from work, she would stop to buy a big package of Lorna Doones. By the time she arrived home, half the package was gone. She’d stash the remainder under the car seat for her next drive.

To Peg Duvall, who is remarkably open in talking about her eating habits and weight problems, sugar is a drug. It picks her up when she’s tired, calms her down when she’s stressed. Whenever life hands Duvall a challenge, she seeks sweets for comfort, sometimes morning, noon and night, ever aware that sugar’s high will inevitably sabotage her energy and take its toll on her body. “One bite leads to another. One cookie leads to the whole package,” Duvall, who has sought nutrition counseling, laments. “I’m miserable shortly after I’m comforted, but I still seek sweets. This is insanity.”

TELLTALE SIGNS

Late one night in 1999 in a research laboratory on the gothic, ivy-cloaked campus of Princeton University, a student saw something that casts a new light on Peg Duvall’s cravings.

Neuroscientist Bart Hoebel had been studying animals under the influence for years. For a month, the psychology professor and his research team fed rats a regular chow and a sugar solution, comparable to the sweetness of fruit canned in heavy syrup. As the researchers expected, the rats preferred the sugar water to the regular chow. But when a drug was used to block the effects of the sugar in the rats’ brains, the results astounded the researchers.